Question PC seemingly won't POST when display output is Graphics Card

[Ghhyrd]

Hi everyone,

I've already spent a day troubleshooting this PC and I'm scratching my head, it's quite bizarre and I feel like I'm on the cusp of working it out but there something I'm missing.
The PC has been in perfect working order (used only for work, low-intensity office apps - new GPU c. 2020 to power an oversized vanity 4K monitor for photography hobby) but wouldn't boot following a suspected PSU failure; the 10-20 year old 300W LITEON PSU has been replaced with a shiny Corsair CX450M but the PC still wouldn't boot.

OS: Windows 10
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P
CPU: AMD FX-4100
PSU: Corsair CX450M
GPU: ZOTAC GTX1050-Ti
SSD: Crucial MX100 512GB
HDD: WD Green 2TB
RAM: 2x 4GB Patriot Viper

After Power On, all fans spin, no beeps (single startup beep expected), zero output signal, nothing further.
Following process of elimination, (Almost all hardware removed/replaced during testing) it turns out the PC will boot perfectly through to OS without the graphics card inserted. I put naturally put this down to a GPU problem and tried it in another PC.
The GPU worked perfectly in the other PC. I assumed that there must be a problem with the PCIe but sadly I have no other GPU to test in this PC and the motherboard has one single PCIe.
On VGA Integrated Graphics I downloaded the most up-to-date drivers from nvidia and tried a "clean" install (without DDU) and retried the GPU to no avail.
As a last ditch effort I pulled the board battery and tried clearing CMOS, but this didn't solve the GPU problem. I asked BIOS to change from preventing boot on All Errors but Keyboard to not preventing boot on any errors, but still no dice. This is where things got interesting.
I asked BIOS to boot from Integrated Graphics first, and re-seated the GPU.
The PC booted fine and displayed monitor VGA from Integrated Graphics with the GPU seated and connected by HDMI.
On loading into OS, Windows recognises the card is there, but that there is "a problem" (Error code 43).
In device manager, it is possible to simply disable the card and re-enable it and Windows reports no problems, and I can then switch the monitor to HDMI and it will output perfectly.


This is where I'm at a loss. The problem seems to be occurring during - or before - POST.
It's not the card - the card works perfectly off the bat in another PC.
It's not the monitor or HDMI cable - it has been tested on alternate displays with new cables.
It doesn't seem to be the power or cable - it's a brand new unit with higher wattage and works after switching output from integrated VGA.
It doesn't seem to be the PCIe or card seating - the card will display and work in this PC after re-enabling in Windows and switching the output.
It doesn't seem to be the drivers - I've performed an nvidia-clean reinstall and this shouldn't prevent BIOS.
It doesn't seem to be BIOS settings - CMOS battery has been pulled and BIOS settings apparently reset, plus as per the former point the system had been working perfectly before.
RAM has been removed and replaced, hard drives disconnected, and nothing changes the situation.

I'm obsessed with getting my head around this.
What am I missing?

 

[Avro Arrow]

What you're missing another card to test with.

From what you've said, I'm 90% certain that the problem is with your PCI-Express slot. If it were the card, it wouldn't work in another PC as you tested and if it were anything else, switching to the HD 3000 IGP wouldn't have had any effect.

Without another video card to test, you will have literally no way of knowing 100% but you've done a great job of eliminating everything else. You've taken all the right steps and clearly know what you're doing. I honestly think that the slot is bad.

Fortunately, for office apps, the HD 3000 will be just fine. If you want to do any kind of gaming, well, the GTX 1050 is pretty useless for that anyway. If I were you, I'd just borrow a card from a friend for the five minutes that it takes to test it.

You know what's funny? I have an RX 6800 XT, a 5700 XT, two R9 Furies, an HD 7970, an HD 6450, an HD 5870, an HD 5450, two HD 4870s and an 8500 GT. The 8500 GT is for when I play any REALLY OLD online games that need good OpenGL support (which only nVidia has from that era).

The HD 6450 and HD 5450 are just small and easy-to-install video cards that I use for diagnostic purposes like yours. They're my two passively-cooled low-wattage cards so I don't have to worry about them overheating from having a failed fan. They also both have a TDP of only 19W so they're very gentle if a PSU has been somehow compromised. The HD 5450 is especially good because it has one HDMI port, one DVI port and one VGA port. There are very few displays that can't plug into it. Best of all, they cost next to nothing so if I fry one, who cares?

Here, you can grab one for almost nothing from eBay:
Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 - $26USD

I bet you'd get it if you offered $25.

 

[Ghhyrd]

What you're missing another card to test with.

From what you've said, I'm 90% certain that the problem is with your PCI-Express slot. If it were the card, it wouldn't work in another PC as you tested and if it were anything else, switching to the HD 3000 IGP wouldn't have had any effect.

Without another video card to test, you will have literally no way of knowing 100%

Ready to start pulling your hair out too? Ready to go looking for that 10% uncertainty?

My problem is I don't think I've ever replaced a card that hasn't broken first.
But after digging through the depths I've uncovered my monstrous old GTX260... possibly -the only- card I've ever replaced voluntarily.

After carefully jimmying this enormous brick into this not-huge case (the same mistake which bricked my Asus P5N-D Mobo ten or so years ago) and needing to connect extra power, I started the computer on Integrated VGA, as normal, clean installed the appropriate drivers, restarted into BIOS, switched to boot PCIe output, and held my breath....

*BEEP*... Boot to OS. Card recognised, working as intended.
What now? Am I going mad?
I half expected this +decade old paperweight not to spin up at all but it's working like a charm. I put the 1050 back in and we're back to square one; no POST no beep.
How could this be happening? Maybe I need to wiggle the card in the slot? Maybe the PCB is just that much thinner and it isn't making full contact at a certain angle and the chunkier GTX260 is?
This is just weird. If you've got anything else to throw at this, something might stick so please do go ahead.

The irony is, the sole reason I'm using this card is because of the 4k monitor which the IGP won't handle. If I'm being perfectly honest I could probably straight swap the motherboard from the other machine but at this point I just can't let this go unsolved.

 

[Eximo]

Cards can die. Not much else to say. I wouldn't waste more time on this system regardless. FX4100 is a very outdated processor in a very old platform.

5600G gets you a nice light Vega graphics core to run your display. You get a lot more RAM, much faster storage. And you can carry over your PSU, chassis, and your older storage drives.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G 3.9 GHz 6-Core Processor ($121.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock B550M-HDV Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($30.97 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($30.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $263.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-05-03 10:15 EDT-0400

 

[DRagor]

it isn't making full contact at a certain angle and the chunkier GTX260 is

I would assume so. There are certain pins in PCIe slot that are used to tell the motherboard there is a card installed in the slot. It could be that pin no longer makes proper contact with light-weighted 1050 and sends BIOS to hang, while the 260 might be heavy enough to force the proper contact. Obviously that's just a theory but seems plausible IMO.

 

[Eximo]

I somehow missed the part about testing in another system.

PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0? Maybe the CPU's PCIe lanes are starting to degrade?

 

[Ghhyrd]

Cards can die. Not much else to say. I wouldn't waste more time on this system regardless. FX4100 is a very outdated processor in a very old platform.

5600G gets you a nice light Vega graphics core to run your display. You get a lot more RAM, much faster storage. And you can carry over your PSU, chassis, and your older storage drives.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G 3.9 GHz 6-Core Processor ($121.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock B550M-HDV Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($30.97 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($30.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $263.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-05-03 10:15 EDT-0400

Thanks for the recommendations, problem is I'm fixing this for someone else. They've already had to pay for a new PSU and they aren't really looking to pay for new components if possible so I'd love to get it fixed or at worst, just swap the motherboard lol.

I would assume so. There are certain pins in PCIe slot that are used to tell the motherboard there is a card installed in the slot. It could be that pin no longer makes proper contact with light-weighted 1050 and sends BIOS to hang, while the 260 might be heavy enough to force the proper contact. Obviously that's just a theory but seems plausible IMO.

Might be it - I've managed to find another card to test, an old 8600GT I thought showing display errors - it's single slot and even lighter and it manages to work better than I even thought it might. I am so confused!

I've even tried to boot having it at slightly different angles, having given it a wiggle, having it sat practically halfway up the slot, having it screwed down tight, and physically pushing it in. None of them work and it is absolutely bizarre.

Since doing these weird and destructive-sounding attempts, the 1050 is sat on the other motherboard in the test PC and the 8600GT in the main PC and both are working fine. WTF.

Is there any possibility there may be some BIOS setting hampering it? I'm going to try pulling the CMOS battery again but if it didn't work before...

I somehow missed the part about testing in another system.

PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0? Maybe the CPU's PCIe lanes are starting to degrade?

Other motherboard is an ASUS M5A78L-M Plus. It looks like they're all PCIe 2.0.
You think the CPU could be involved? How would that work? I'm not experienced in that

 

[Avro Arrow]

Ready to start pulling your hair out too? Ready to go looking for that 10% uncertainty?

Oh, I have been there. Imagine thinking FOR YEARS that your PC takes almost two minutes to boot because ASRock boards take a long time only to discover, through a completely random (and stressful) series of events, that it was just a faulty SATA cable!

I still cringe when I think about that.

My problem is I don't think I've ever replaced a card that hasn't broken first.

Yeah, I always keep my previous card as a backup and by the time I've upgraded again, the card isn't even worth trying to sell. So, I ended up owning a lot of cards. I got the HD 6450 and HD 5450 from my parents because they upgraded to cards that can actually support 4K TVs (they both have HTPCs that I built them).

But after digging through the depths I've uncovered my monstrous old GTX260... possibly -the only- card I've ever replaced voluntarily.

That'll work! I remember those cards well because that's when I worked for Tiger Direct. I remember their oddball 968MB of VRAM.

After carefully jimmying this enormous brick into this not-huge case (the same mistake which bricked my Asus P5N-D Mobo ten or so years ago) and needing to connect extra power, I started the computer on Integrated VGA, as normal, clean installed the appropriate drivers, restarted into BIOS, switched to boot PCIe output, and held my breath....

Heheheheh, I know that feeling all too well.

*BEEP*... Boot to OS. Card recognised, working as intended.
What now? Am I going mad?
I half expected this +decade old paperweight not to spin up at all but it's working like a charm.

The wonders of x86 backwards-compatibility continue. See, sometimes it's good to not be too ready to just discard things like that, if only for times like this.

Just out of curiosity, what was the brand of the GTX 260? Back then, it could've been Sparkle, BFG, XFX, EVGA, Palit, PNY (or some others that I can't remember ATM).

I put the 1050 back in and we're back to square one; no POST no beep.

Oh man.... That's just nuts.

How could this be happening? Maybe I need to wiggle the card in the slot? Maybe the PCB is just that much thinner and it isn't making full contact at a certain angle and the chunkier GTX260 is?

No, that can't be it because if that were the case, it never would've worked, but it did before...

This is just weird. If you've got anything else to throw at this, something might stick so please do go ahead.

Jeez... No, I don't have any ideas, well, no solid ideas anyway.

Maybe there's an intermittent problem with the card. I had something similar happen with a used RX 580 2048SP that I got from AliExpress for $70CAD. The card didn't work so I got a full refund on it.

Since I had the thing and it was free at that point, I started messing around with it. I took the cooler off, re-did the thermal paste on the GPU die (the original paste was still fine though) then I popped it into a build that I threw together with spare parts, took it to work and tried unsuccessfully to use it with one of the displays here.

The displays here at work only have DisplayPort so I had to get a DP cable. I plugged it in, thinking that I was going to get nothing and that I'd have to screw around with it but the damn thing worked. It fired right up on the first try! I was able to identify the card as a bona fide RX 580 2048SP 8GB, using AMD's auto-detect driver installer.

Then when I took it home and tried using it with HDMI, again, no dice. I even tried using an active DP to HDMI adapter but still nothing. So yeah, I know how mind-bending these things can be.

The one constant though was that the motherboards all worked. I think that's the situation in your case as well. It doesn't appear that the motherboard is the issue because it works with the GTX 260 and it works with the IGP. I'm truly at a loss as to why the GTX 1050 isn't working in that PC but works in the other. Maybe try it in the other PC again and see if it works again. If it doesn't, then you know for sure that it's the card.

The irony is, the sole reason I'm using this card is because of the 4k monitor which the IGP won't handle. If I'm being perfectly honest I could probably straight swap the motherboard from the other machine but at this point I just can't let this go unsolved.

Yeah, there isn't really any other reason to be using a GTX 1050 these days. The GTX 260 was a beast but 4K wasn't even a thought when it was en vogue. At the time, gaming at 1080p was the new and exciting resolution and cards only had, at most, DVI ports.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I somehow missed the part about testing in another system.

PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0? Maybe the CPU's PCIe lanes are starting to degrade?

I don't think that's it because Ghhyrd popped in a GTX 260 and it fired right up. I think that the card must have some kind of intermittent problem on-board that may or may not have had something to do with the PSU.

 

[DRagor]

Is there any possibility there may be some BIOS setting hampering it?

Wasn't the card working previously in this system though?
The only thing that comes to mind is Legacy options in BIOS - since 1050 is newest of the cards you tried. It is the long shot but worth trying, all you gotta lose is time.

 

[Ghhyrd]

Just out of curiosity, what was the brand of the GTX 260? Back then, it could've been Sparkle, BFG, XFX, EVGA, Palit, PNY (or some others that I can't remember ATM).


The one constant though was that the motherboards all worked. I think that's the situation in your case as well. It doesn't appear that the motherboard is the issue because it works with the GTX 260 and it works with the IGP. I'm truly at a loss as to why the GTX 1050 isn't working in that PC but works in the other. Maybe try it in the other PC again and see if it works again. If it doesn't, then you know for sure that it's the card.

The GTX260 is an XFX - a big, black and green, PCIe-sagging machine haha

And the 1050 has gone back in the other machine - where it still works fine... and this leads me to my conclusion.

Wasn't the card working previously in this system though?
The only thing that comes to mind is Legacy options in BIOS - since 1050 is newest of the cards you tried. It is the long shot but worth trying, all you gotta lose is time.

I have given up!
After two full wasted days of troubleshooting this situation I have simply concluded that the existing motherboard is haunted by a gremlin and will be calling a priest to take it from here.

The motherboard from the testing PC has been swapped into the repair PC and everything else placed back on the new board. The old haunted board will be sealed up in the testing PC which will only be used for Integrated Graphics work forevermore anyway.

It feels good to have a "solution".... and awful to be giving up and never know what was wrong in the first place!

Thanks for your help everyone, give yourself a pat on the back; we tried